What Was German Expressionism

Other cool tricks used by the Fritz Lang include heavy use of shadows (largely in the style of the yet to come Film-Noir genre), and the use of setting to create darker moods (evidence that Lang was at the head of the German Expressionist movement).

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is a German Expressionist film that was released in 1920. The film was directed by Robert Wiene. Expressionism is defined as a visible world that is reshaped and even, distorted by internal forces such as soul, spirit, subjectivity, and emotion. A major component of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is it contains various examples of mise-en-scène, which is associated with visual aspects such as props in the background or clothing and the makeup the actor is wearing. Moreover, “boxes within boxes” is seen numerous times throughout The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. One example where “boxes within boxes” is seen in the film is in Dr. Caligari’s tiny shack, where he has Cesare

When looking at Norma Desmond the last thing that comes to mind is the monstrous figure of Dr. Caligari, but their movies have more in common than what we think. In this essay, I will compare and contrast two scenes: one from Sunset Boulevard and another from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, to show how German Expressionism helped to shape the aesthetic of Film Noir. While both of them rely on making a distorted reality that keeps us restless, Sunset Boulevard lacks the twisted visual style that characterizes The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.

1933 onwards did not hail an instant and a total change in the look of the films produced if. Richard Grunberger, "A Social History of the Third Reich":

World War I, the isolation Germans experienced and the demand for films after the cutoff of foreign film imports was an opening for a new movement of cinema, the German expressionist cinema. It is the movement of cinema that started during Weimar Germany. The German expressionist cinema is where the horror genre grew and where it influenced Film Noir as German Expressionism cinema is a collection of silent horror films. Just like any other cinema, it incorporates the use of mise-en-scène to convey meaning, which is a French word for all what is in a scene; the set, lighting costumes and actors and all the little details in it. Mise-en-scène was evident in expressing the post-war German reality and psychological trauma.

German Expressionism was commenced in Germany before World War I, but didn’t catch the audience’s eye till the 1920’s. German Expressionism impacted film tremendously, but also influenced music, theater, painting, sculpture and architecture. One of the first German Expressionism films were The Student of Prague (1913), The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), and From Morn to Midnight (1920). These films came about because of the isolation in Germany during World War I. Therefore, the government also banned any type of foreign films, which increased the production of domestic films. The production of domestic films went from 24 films in 1914 to 130 in 1918. However, it caught international audience eyes by 1922 and appreciated the German cinema.

Around the 1920’s and 30’s, art became a trending hobby in Germany after years of little popularity. Sadly, during this same time in Germany, Adolf Hitler was in control over the Jewish population. This mix-up of contrasting events led to turmoil in the creativity community.

This development included the fine arts, dance, painting, architecture, and as cinema as well. The German become the most advanced in the silent cinema than Hollywood in that era. The horror genre was going through an interesting turning point. The German Expressionism uses the famous artworks of Van Gogh, Edward Munch, and Cezanne art techniques of derange of the imbalance of the pictographic preparation of the complete distortion. The art techniques uses of the space with the colors and the lines and this helps create off the wall violent divergence. This became the important of the subjective vision of the outside world. According to Cliffsnotes.com the German Expressionism uses newly artistic ideas during early

German Expressionism is film movement of darkness, madness, and fear and few films personify German Expressionism as the Robert Wiene 1920 silent horror film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Considered the quintessential work of the German Expressionist era, Dr. Caligari demonstrates many of the stylistic and thematic elements of the aesthetic movement. In the sequence used for this paper many of these elements such as editing and mise en scene are seen. Mes-en-scene is widely considered the main draw of German Expressionism. Rather than focusing on the realism of the real world, German Expressionism counters the principle of realism and practises extreme distortion as means to communicate inner emotional reality (Johnson, 2010).

According to Klinge & Klinge (1983), “German Expressionism is a creative movement that originated in Germany in the 1920s, before the First World War which consist of many different creative media such as visual art, literature, dance, painting, sculpture, architecture, as well as the cinema because the world of cinema is also impacted by it. German expressionism is generally defined as the rejection of Western conventions, and the depiction of reality that is widely distorted for emotional effect. In that period, it’s visual style and themes portrays the social and personal strike felt in Germany. Artists project their human feelings through their films by turning inward. This produces a series of dark and dull in mood films featuring characters

German expressionism was a defining film movement in the 1920s. It brought new and different ways of filming and and seeing films. German expressionism comes from a mixture of romanticism and expressionist art to make these very abstract and surrealist films. One widely known example of German expressionist films is F. W. Muranu’s horror classic Nosferatu. Nosferatu is one of the most influential horror films, in that it is one of the first vampire movies to have been made. Nosferatu is full of German expressionism characteristics that help further the plot and the overall style of the film. The film uses harsh shadows, makeup, costumes, and setting to make up this very stylized and irrational mise-en-scene. Not only does Muranu use a stylized

At the turn of the century Paris was one of the capitals of culture and art to the outside world. However, the truth of the matter was that this taboo-ridden society was being run by an aristocracy that was repressing the arts. Naturally, when World War 1 broke out, the suppressed French society finally had a release and a rebellion against order arose. WWI specifically affected the theatre of French and it’s aftermath. From the ashes of war the avant-garde theatre grew and styles such as Dadaism and Surrealism were born. It was both the climate of culture before the war and the devastation of the war that lead to the outbreak of avant-garde theatre in France.

Modernism is defined as the movement in the arts that aims to depart significantly from traditional styles or ideas. According to Walter Gropius (Cited by Sculdenfrei [sa]) clearly stated out that “art and technology-anew unity”. Since the incidence in Germany such as the first World War , many of the Germans (the leftwings) were already impacted by the cultural analysis were accompanied by the “Russian Revolution”( Bauhaus [sa])

During the nineteen forties and fifties, the art economy in America exploded after several of the artists that previously lived in Europe flooded into New York because of the immense damage in Europe from the second world war.

German Expressionism emerged in the 1920s prior to World War I, and continued to be influenced as the war raged on. The style that developed due to Germany’s ban on foreign cinema was an abstract, low-budget method cultivating around the rebellious and manic nature of the films. German Expressionism embodies the political ideals of the time because it was born from the ashes of World War I. Hanz Janowitz and Cal Mayer’s, The Cabinet of Dr. Cligari, directed by Robert Weine, can be said to have transformed and shaped political views in Germany, along with the expressionism in the entire film industry as a whole through its use of complex story lines and the creation of abstract settings. Weine’s film fosters the idea of total authority and